Only A Phase

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 3

Only A Phase

[A Fourth Leader in "The Times’’] “Any transitory state or stage in a regularly recurring cycle of changes.” This is what the dictionary says a “Phase” is. It is a noun that we quite often employ. Why is it that, when we do so, we always seem to have in mind a state or stage which is not only transitory but regrettable? “It’s only a phase,” we say uncertainly when our children sulk, fight, or burst into tears for no reason. When down mantles the drawing room carpet after the young dog has eviscerated a cushion, its master seeks to mitigate the offence by suggesting that “It’s only a phase.” One would have thought that ;in the cycle of changes some would- be for the better. Perhaps, they are; but,if so we do not recognize them as phases. . y, If a child suddenly starts being obedient or polite or industrious, nobody dreams of diagnosing that as a phase. So far as its household usage goes, the meaning of the word would be more accurately defined as “an unsatisfactory state of affairs which nobody can do anything about and which everybody hopes will come to an end.” When we use,it we are really whistling in the dark. It is sad when we have to give up doing this; “I used to think it was only a phase” is among the most poignant sentences iri the language.

Another odd thing about phases is that the people who go through them seem to do So unawares. When a young man decides to become a sculptor or a Communist everybody else knows, or pretends to know, that he is only going through a phase; but to him, at the time, this slice of his career presents itself ip an entirely different light. Progress would be impossible without change; change would be impossible, or anyhow very difficult, without phases. Therefore phases are good things. This makes it all the stranger that we should seldom refer to them save in tones of thinly disguised alarm.

The author, a Christchurch woman, informs us that the title of her book—which was reviewed last Saturday—is “Indian Interval,” not “Indian Interlude.”